This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

POTUS has cast California as “out of control” ….proposed legislation
[in Sacramento] would make the entire state a sanctuary for “illegal
aliens” …. [according to POTUS] “illegal aliens breed crime.”

Huge demographic change in CAL since 1980: Today the state’s population
of 40 million is 40% Latino, 13% Asian, and only 38% white. Over the
past two decades, CAL has seen an influx of 3.5 million immigrants,
mostly Latino. An estimated 2.4 million undocumented immigrants also
live in the state. CRIMINALS!! ?? According to the FBI, the
California Department of Justice and the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control, the state has seen precipitous drops in every major category of
crime and violence that can be reliable measured. In Trump terms, you
might say that modern California is the opposite of “American carnage.” The numbers are striking. Since 1980, California’s rate of reported crime overall has fallen by 62%.

[see rest of article on page A11, OP-ED]

Mike Males (Senior Researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco)

And let's remember. California and the rest of the Southwest exists because our people were invaded by Europeans. The continent, too, our Motherland.

Our lands were taken away. And they still are getting taken away through gentrification, school charterization, and neoliberal policies that equate to land grabs and "accumulation by dispossession," to use neoliberalism scholar, David Harvey's words.

We as a community throughout the passage of time have shown admirable restraint—less, I think, because we're deferential, and more because psychically, emotionally, spiritually, and historically, we are still home. Our ancestors never left this continent. We never left. Y no nos vamos!

Leave us alone, Donald Trump! Stop wreaking havoc on our people, our children, teachers, and communities. Not only have we not done anything to you, you and your billionaire friends are rich in great part because of their sacrifices and poorly-paid labor.

And c'mon people. Join us in letting your representatives know the impact of these nightmarish injustices on our communities.If you do not know who represents you, click here to find out.

Declaring California to be “out of control,” President Trump
threatened to withhold federal funding to the state if it votes to
declare itself a sanctuary state. A state Senate committee on Tuesday approved a bill
from State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León that would
prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies from using officers or
jails to uphold federal immigration laws, effectively a statewide
version of so-called sanctuary cities. In an interview
airing during Fox’s Super Bowl pregame show, Fox News Channel host Bill
O’Reilly asked the president about the plan. “I think
it’s ridiculous,” Trump said, reiterating his opposition to sanctuary
cities, which he said “breed crime.” He signed an executive order in his
first week in office that threatened to withhold federal funding for
cities that don't cooperate with federal immigration officials.
“If we have to, we’ll defund," Trump said. "We give tremendous
amounts of money to California. California in many ways is out of
control, as you know.” Trump said it wasn’t his
preference to do so, and that states and cities should get money they
need “to properly operate.” But, “if they’re going to have sanctuary cities, we may have to do that. Certainly that would be a weapon,” he said.